admina pastoral visit to the region, people were happy that the head of the Church of England commonly known as the Anglican Church was doing so.
When we learnt that Zimbabwe was on his itinerary we hoped that the Anglican saga would finally be resolved amicably. Why, because the British government over the past decade has isolated Zimbabwe and imposed illegal economic sanctions.
However, the church looked the other way. More or less like a political problem that did not require a spiritual solution! Most Reverend, this is something that you are aware of, considering that the second most senior cleric in the Church of England the Archbishop of York John Tucker Mugabi Sentamu cut up his collar in front of TV cameras vowing to put it on when President Mugabe was removed from power.
For this writer and former students of St Augustine’s Mission in Penhalonga, your pastoral visit brought back bitter-sweet memories of a very brave and dedicated man of God, who was also an educationist and school principal – Father Prosser.
At the height of the liberation struggle, he told our class, “even if Rhodesian army warplanes fly into the exam room, keep on writing. You’ll only stop when the invigilator tells you to.” A likely impossibility, but as a teacher and spiritual leader, it was his responsibility to instill confidence in us.
Most Reverend, I give this background to connect your visit, the Anglican Church and its operations in Zimbabwe vis-à-vis its history and relationship with its former colony Britain, your motherland.
I also say this because Zimbabweans wanted to receive you in a spiritual manner, for in Matthew 10:40-41 the Lord says, “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me.
Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and anyone who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man’s reward.”
Whether Anglican or not, we do not want to miss out on the reward. Your visit was also made a real big event, although the political aspect outweighed the spiritual.
The most repeated headline was, “Williams to confront Mugabe”. This was an antithesis of what most people, Christians in particular envisaged – a man of God just coming to spread the Word of God. They ended up portraying you as the judge. We were back in the colonial era. Even the British media did not miss out on this. Eventually, we realised that you represented not just the Church of England, but the British establishment as well. Most Reverend, you came, saw and you met with so many, including President Mugabe. I don’t know whether you actually confronted him. But the bottom line is that it did not need a decade for the Archbishop of Canterbury to come and sort out the issues in the Church of the Province of Central Africa.
The issues have dogged the church for quite a while. In fact, if all truth be told, the fissures could never have widened if conflict management had been applied earlier. If the early church in the Bible encountered problems soon after Pentecost, why should it be different today? If Christ said that believers would be persecuted on account of the gospel, why should the Anglican laity and leadership be spared?
I’m sure that your escorts took you around and one of the places you saw was the Anglican Cathedral along Nelson Mandela Road and Sam Nujoma Street.
It was not construction ingenuity that placed the Church of England Cathedral; Parliament buildings; two hotels on the back and front of these buildings; the Supreme Court; Munhumutapa building (centre of government) and the High Court around the same spot. They all speak volumes about British interests and the role of the church therein. However, Most Reverend notwithstanding the issues that led you to see
President Mugabe, there is no denying that right from the beginning, the Church of England, has been in a contestation of power in this country, in some cases desiring to take the leading role.
I will skip most of the colonial relationships between church and state. But, what I found very instructive in this discourse are issues pertaining to where the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe is right now. You were present when a “Dossier of abuses committed against the Anglican Dioceses of Zimbabwe Church of the Province of Central Africa”, co-authored by one Archbishop and six bishops was presented to President Mugabe.
I do not question the contents of that dossier because some of the issues raised are before our courts of law.
However, I just wondered why the seven eminent personalities had to wait so long to bring these issues to their own President’s attention? Why did the dossier wait for your pastoral visit? Notwithstanding what is currently taking place, which should not be condoned if it goes against the gospel of Jesus Christ, in my view, there is what I could term deliberate amnesia. Non-Anglicans might have forgotten the power struggle between the black and white clergy after independence.
Then Vicar-General of the Anglican Diocese of Harare and Rector of St Luke’s in Rhodesville, Reverend Timothy Neill and Bishop Nolbert Kunonga started being media issues in the mid-90s.
A March 5, 1996 report says Rev Neill asked his parishioners to pray for The Financial Gazette so that there would still be “opposition” against The Herald which he branded a “Government mouthpiece”.
Rev Neill had made it clear since the mid-eighties that he disliked The Herald, and at times, led his congregation “in bidding prayers for its ‘conversion’.”
It is interesting that Rev Neill’s prayer request was replicated years later when some clergy openly said that they were praying for President Mugabe’s death. If Archbishop Sentamu also desecrated one of the hallmarks of his calling, why would parishioners stop taking sides?
After that, Rev Neill was on a warpath against the president. A March 15, 2000 report says he distributed a pamphlet criticising President Mugabe’s land redistribution exercise and questioned whether or not he still had the right to remain in office. He also questioned why Zimbabwean soldiers were fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This, coming from a former Rhodesian soldier! Retired Bishop Jonathan
Siyachitema responded to the pamphlet issue thus: “Anything that does not come under my name has nothing to do with the Anglican Church. When we get hold of the paper, we will discuss it in the church and take internal disciplinary measures if necessary”.
But the fire that Rev Neill had started continued to be fanned. Since land was the issue, and remains an issue, every method was used to polarise the nation, the church included. Most Reverend, readers responded to Rev Neill’s politicisation of the pulpit. On March 18, 2000, S C Karimera wrote: “It is essential for Father Neill’s credibility in the land saga not to make himself a latter day Christian missionary, asking Africans to close their eyes and pray while their pioneer descendants continue to hold onto the land.”
One S Auret wrote, “The Catholic Church and its bishops could take a leaf out of Rev Tim Neill’s book. It is not a case of being apolitical, but a case of fighting injustices of our time . . . Why is Archbishop Chakaipa not raising the same sentiments?”
Most Reverend, I’m sure you read the racial undertones in all this. You must be wondering what Rev Neill has to do with your visit. Simple! The cracks in the Anglican Church are age old and Rev Neill as a post-independent clergyman did his fair share. Those goings-on should be critiqued in their proper context in order to understand the present situation. What we have noted all these years is that emotions have taken the better part of clergy, parishioners and sympathisers.
When a body unified by the Spirit of the Lord rejects unity, people start asking questions.
Father Kunonga was confirmed bishop on February 1, 2001 by a Confirmation Court which sat in Kitwe, Zambia. When Rev Neill finally left, his major goal was to ensure that President Mugabe is removed from power. Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:10-17 addresses this: “One of you says, I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos” another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, ‘I follow Christ’.
“Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptised into the name of Paul?”
Homosexuality has also become one of the divisive points. We might say accommodate but is this what the Lord says in the Bible? Be that as it may, Most Reverend, we hope that forgiveness, unity and love return to the church, and that the church continues to work hand in glove with the Government for the material and spiritual benefit of the people.
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